How to Tailor Your Sales Content for Greater Relevance and Impact

July 17, 2014

Back in 2006, Microsoft founder Bill Gates famously said that “content is king.” Although he’s not too far from the truth, content without context does not create additional value, neither for sales professionals or potential buyers.

A better way to sell is to target customers and prospects using tools that embrace context as much as content. Here’s three steps to consider:

Figure out where your prospects and customers are in the sales lifecycle and tailor content to the specific stage. Create content by either:

Modifying your value proposition message to “why change?” or

Modifying your value proposition message to “why are you the best choice?

Research where your prospects are in the sales cycle and leverage social networks to your advantage.

Follow your prospects and engage with them on Twitter and LinkedIn

Target keywords and content that is relevant to your product and service, and aligns with the pain points of your prospects

Step 2: Understand and Align to Specific Buyer Roles

Understand the roles of relevant decision makers and tailor your content to the pain points and different needs of each individual. The easiest way to do this is to create a matrix of your stakeholders and map their level and role within the organization. This will help you define different perspectives and patterns to help you tailor both context and content.

Step 3: Use Vertical Color and Language

In other words, being able to clearly demonstrate an understanding of your business challenges and articulate potential solutions. In fact, only 13% of executive buyers believe that salespeople can effectively achieve this. Ideally, you want to understand these three areas: your business, your customer’s business, and the intersection of the two — and how it will benefit the customer.

By focusing on all three steps you should be able to tailor your content for greater impact and relevance, and transform your interactions from push to pull.